We seem to be going back to basics. Generations have gone by when no one felt the obligation to think much about the concept of citizenship in the United States. Intellectual friends of mine are utterly confused by the topic, with no idea where the idea comes from or why it should matter at all. And yet here we are: no topic is as important in determining the future of this country or the world.
In Ancient Roman times, to be a citizen was what it meant to be free. You were “free born,” which is to say that citizenship followed family lineage. To be a citizen meant to have a stake and some measure of say in the shape and direction of the regime and its laws. You had representation. You had rights. You could hold public office. You could own property. In return, you paid taxes but also enjoyed certain benefits. For example, citizens could not be subject to certain punishments like flogging, torture, or crucifixion.
Who was not considered a citizen? Everyone else. The slave, no. The merchant, no. Workers and peasants, no. Foreigners, no. Immigrants, no. Citizenship pertained to a noble few, a small minority, and it stayed within the family. Only very late, by the 3rd century AD, did citizenship extend to members of the highest ranks of the military.
After the fall of Rome, the idea of citizenship gradually died and was replaced by feudal forms of ownership and absolutist monarchies working together with ecclesiastical powers that managed systems of learning and public philosophy. That was how public order, such as it was, came to be maintained.
In what we call the West, this began to change following the last of the Black Death plagues of Europe in the 15th century. The following two centuries saw the dawn of commercial empires and, with them, the gradual extension of rights and liberties to merchants and foreigners. The dawning of prosperity in the modern sense was the turning point because now people could hold money which granted them choice in how to spend it. Consumer culture was born alongside growing powers to producers and financiers, and their cultural, political, and economic power began to overtake that of the dynasties of lineage and religious loyalty.
Here was also the birth of the modern concept of citizenship, which expanded to ever more classes but, crucially, the liberty it brought was of a different form than anything known by the ancients. Freedom pertained to the individual, who was in a position to choose professions, travel, migrate, and even form new families without direct dictate from communities and family legacy. The population became ever more mixed in religious attachment, professional association, nationality, and life aspiration. The rights of the citizen came to be ever more codified in the 17th and 18th centuries, culminating in documents like the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. These heavily informed the practices of governments throughout Europe and then Latin America and beyond.
By the end of the 19th century, a consensus had emerged that was nearly global in scope. The way forward was not through monarchical privilege and ecclesiastical loyalty but through commerce, the practical arts, and individual rights, which ideally pertained to the whole population. Slavery itself, an accepted institution in the ancient world, was completely discredited both on moral and practical grounds. This period is called the Belle Epoque for good reason.
The settled consensus worldwide came to be as follows. Peoples would be organized into defined nation states with borders, the purpose of which is to restrain the juridical power of regimes. Regimes would act within their borders but not outside of them. Spheres of influence followed trade routes and those too should be constrained by diplomacy.
The concept of citizenship was defined at the discretion of the nation state. Its main obligation entailed payment of taxes and compliance with laws, in exchange for which the citizens were granted the right to influence the shape of the regime under which they lived. All governments would become people’s governments, and that notion (democracy) would keep power in check domestically, even as borders restrained states internationally.
That was the idea of citizenship. It could be granted to anyone but with the understanding that the status confers influence over the direction and actions of the regime. Given that, nation states were rightly cautious in making citizens. They needed an understanding of the ideals of the nation and an investment in its future as stakeholders. To be a good citizen meant some literacy in the nation’s history, perhaps a facility with language, an agreement to adhere to the laws, and reveal some evidence of an attachment to the aspirations of the political community.
The single most powerful privilege that came with citizenship was the vote. You could have influence over the people who hold office and what they do in office, since they were now “representatives” and never dictators. In this way, the people could stop tyranny via the election process, which guaranteed a peaceful transition of power from one team to another depending entirely on the outcome of an election.
This is how absolutely crucial the concept of citizenship is. It traces to the ancient world but came to be reborn in the modern (16th century) form as the lynchpin of how we organize politics and society itself. Aristotle said “he who has the power to take part in the deliberative or judicial administration of any state is said by us to be a citizen of that state.” With modernity, the power to take part has been expanded to all but defined by the limits implied in the designation of citizenship.
It follows that if the notion of citizenship breaks down, all is lost. The state has no coherence. Society itself is made vulnerable and shatters. The future becomes radically uncertain. Tyranny is certain to take over as the modern equivalent of warlords takes power, rallying random mobs toward legal and illegal violence. In that sense, the notion of citizenship is the glue that separates us from completely uncivilized chaos and violence.
Three observations follow.
First, there is no such thing as global citizenship. Governments are not global and there is no global plebiscite. The notion itself is absurd.
Second, not everyone on the planet earth can arbitrarily be made a citizen of any state. Otherwise, the coherence of the system would be totally lost. People can travel. They can work. They can be granted rights. But the most precious privilege of full citizenship is not a universal grant.
Third, no one who isn’t a citizen can be permitted to vote in any election the outcome of which affects civic affairs. That is so obvious that it is almost painful to have to write that sentence. And yet, and incredibly, it is suddenly in question.
A case came before the Supreme Court last week concerning 1,600 noncitizens who were discovered on the voter rolls in Virginia. The court majority said, of course, that they should and must be removed. Three justices dissented without explaining why: Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
That is truly unfathomable. I have no idea of the extent to which our concept of citizenship has decayed over the decades, but I will say this. We’d better get it together before it is too late. If we do not, all will be lost. The voter rolls will be filled up solely in order to manipulate election outcomes. That practice has been deployed variously in history by empires seeking domination over foreign states, but I’m unaware of a precedent for such to happen internally to a single nation that imports millions of people labeled as refugees solely for purposes of manipulating election outcomes.
Such a practice would be at war with a settled half-millennium-old conception of what civilized life even means. Is that where we are? Let us hope otherwise.
